Oh, How the Years Weigh
by vballmania23
Summary: An SAS man is separated from his unit and comes face to face with a deadly enemy only to be saved by someone he had known years ago.


A fist swung at my exposed side, and I slid a forearm down to block it with a grunt of exertion. My arms were too heavy, weighing me down and slowing my reaction time. It had all started when I was split up from the rest of K-Unit. It was during a firefight with the hostiles, and I had to duck into a side room for cover. I didn't see the man until he was already attacking, and was on the defensive from the start. I was already tired, and the man was inhumanly fast, striking with deadly accuracy. It was all I could do to prevent only the most damaging blows from contacting.

Early on, there was a gasp of recognition and a voice cursing from the other side of the room. I turned and saw a young man – or was that a teenager? - crumpled in a bloody heap on the ground, stirring weakly. Unfortunately, my curiosity was paid with at the price of a hard shot to the kidneys. I spun around and landed on a table, heaving my weight onto that so I could lift up my feet into a double-kick. My assailant jumped back, giving me the half-second I need to regain my feet. Is it possible I'm the man's second battle of the day, the first left in a crumpled heap by his feet? No matter- if he was the one that did such damage to the stranger, he didn't do enough to be anywhere near exhausted.

I'm not sure how long our battle lasted – time passes differently when you're in a battle. When the fighting is swift and unrelenting, moments become hours, the fist taking ages to swung around and up into your gut. At other times, when trying to steal a moment or two to rest, it can seem like milliseconds. All I know was that the fight ended with me slammed against the wall, a knife poised to strike me down. The man opened his mouth – to question me? To gloat?- but I never figured out what he was planning on saying. His words were cut short by the ear-splitting sound of a gunshot.

I flinched in surprise – Sure, I was SAS, but there is just something so different about a deafening noisy chaos of a thousand guns going off at once and the simple, precise sound of a single shot. When faced with a battle, I didn't falter. The enemies were simply a mass of flesh and blood, no names, no faces. They were uniforms and colors trying to attack me, and I responded with the most basic primal instinct to fight back. I fired, but I was never sure if I hit my target. Nobody could put a name to the deadly bullet. But a single shot – that was a death that became far more personal. There was a face, and a name, and a history. There was intent to kill _that _person.

And right now, that person's eyes had rolled to the back of his head, and I heard the wet splatter of blood land on my clothes. It was impossible, but somehow it felt like it was seeping onto my skin, contaminating me as a murderer even though I had done nothing. I shivered, dismayed. I had signed up for the SAS, but such a personal killing was much more different than that. The man's hand, clenched around my shoulder, loosened and dropped with the rest of his body to the ground.

Behind him, the man I had seen before stood, face pale with exertion but had steady as he lowered the gun. His lips were upturned in a vicious sneer, brown eyes narrowed as he glared at the dead man's corpse. Despite that, his breaths, while slightly labored, were even and steady. The expression slowly bled away, but left behind a blank expressionless face that was somehow even worse. He met my gaze evenly, now ignoring the corpse between us. Since I wasn't being attacked, I could pay enough attention to tell he was definitely a teenager, probably somewhere around 16 or 17. One hand still held onto the gun with a loose, comfortable grip that seemed unnatural on someone so young, while the other one was held close to his body. He didn't have any obvious breaks, but he definitely favored one side of his body. His hair, possibly a medium blonde underneath the grime, was matted with sweat and blood.

There was something familiar about him as I stared, and I dug further into my memory to find it. I had always been good at faces, but it wasn't until he limped back and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, _coming?_ that I recognized him. I couldn't help my eyes widening. "Cub?" I asked hesitantly. Was this really the serious, stubborn boy that I had shared two weeks of training with just a few years ago? While his aged face resembled that of the fifth member of K-Unit, I wasn't sure it was actually him. Gone was the belligerent boy who had managed to keep up with four fully-grown men set on humiliating him and making his life as hard as possible. Instead, a cold aloof killer stood in his place, completely assured of his mission and fully prepared to do what it took to complete it. What had happened to the boy who, while not completely innocent, still had that spark of life in him?


End file.
